


(Baby) It's Alright

by FlyAway_33



Series: Everybody Hurts Sometimes [2]
Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Freddie is the sweetest, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Roger is struggling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:02:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23502040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyAway_33/pseuds/FlyAway_33
Summary: He was looking straight at the mirror but all he saw was a blur, not really focusing on his image but instead on his heightened senses as his mind reeled and his heart began to race.
Relationships: Freddie Mercury & Roger Taylor
Series: Everybody Hurts Sometimes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1691062
Comments: 5
Kudos: 34





	(Baby) It's Alright

**Author's Note:**

> If you recognize this, it is because it has been posted before. I previously had it as part of a single story of unrelated chapters, and wanted to reorganize those chapters into individual stories so that I have the opportunity to continue and one of the multiple story lines. Now those chapters will all be re-posted into a series!
> 
> TW: Anxiety/panic attacks

Roger could feel his breath catch in his throat and he didn’t know why. Staring in the little hand mirror that was set on the small coffee table of the studio he could see that his eyes were glazed over with unshed tears but it didn’t register in his mind that he was about to cry. In reality, though, he was looking straight at the mirror but all he saw was a blur, not really focusing on his image but instead on his heightened senses as his mind reeled and his heart began to race. He felt hot and uncomfortable, and his stomach seemed to be tying itself in knots as he sat there on the shabby studio conference room couch. He knew this feeling. 

This feeling was all too familiar and the realization of what was happening to him only made it worse. Roger reached for the abandoned drumstick that rested on the couch cushion beside him, longing for the familiar, cool feeling of the smooth wood that fit perfectly in his calloused palm. As he ran his thumb over the wood grain, the thing that usually calmed him only made his heart leap further into his throat, so he bit his lip and attempted to give the stick one of his signature twirls with his shaking fingers. In an uncharacteristic blunder his fingers fumbled the stick and it flew from his grasp, landing with a clatter on the hard floor. Three pairs of eyes that had previously been pouring over the lyrics and compositions of proposed new songs snapped up and surveyed him in surprise. 

“Rog?” It was Brian who spoke up in concern, seeing the panicked look in his bandmate’s eyes. “You alright?” 

Roger stared back, his eyes wide like a deer caught in headlights and his lips slightly parted as all the air seemed to leave his lungs and would not return. After a long moment he averted his eyes as his right hand came up to slip under the collar of his shirt, his fingertips digging into the sensitive skin of his shoulder while he reached his left hand down to retrieve the stick. It visibly shook as it stretched out, something no one seemed to notice except for Freddie, who was Roger’s closest friend and roommate, and who knew him better than he probably even knew himself. 

Though Brian knew Roger longer than he had, Freddie had lived and worked with Roger, and had practically spent every moment with him for several years. He knew things about Rog that no one else in the world knew and he had seen him in positions and situations no one else ever had. He could see what was happening. He was the only one who’d seen it happen before.

Before the other two bandmates could register anything Freddie had lept to his feet, crossed the room, and had taken Roger’s shaking hand into his. He perched on the couch beside Roger and laid his free hand on his best friend’s back as he leaned to stare into his large, glassy eyes, searching them, reading the masked emotions behind them like an open book. 

“Rog…” he began hesitantly. “You’re okay, darling.” 

Freddie watched in horror, yet wasn’t as surprised as John or Brian were, when the skinny blond’s steely facial expression crumbled and he ducked, hiding his face behind his hand as he bit sharply into the knuckle, his breaths coming in hard, short, panicked bursts as he tried with all his might to hold back the tears that were beginning to escape one by one from his now tightly closed eyes. It was always painful for Freddie to watch when Roger would get like this. Is wasn’t an often occurrence but was definitely something that was usually reserved for the safety of the blond’s bedroom. Living with him, however, it had been inevitable for Freddie to witness Roger’s hard times.

Roger had always been the type of person to hide his emotions from the world. He kept himself safe from judgement and ridicule that way and he had built up steely walls during his formative years that kept him from becoming too vulnerable with anyone. It had been a complete accident one day that Freddie had stumbled upon Roger in the midst of a breakdown the first week they were living together…

*Flashback*

It was week one in their brand new apartment and every night the two boys had eaten out, their lack of culinary skills forcing the already penniless young adults to scrape up as much from their stall earnings as they could to the point where they had nothing left. Paying their deposit had effectively run them dry to begin with. Freddie was determined to scrape up something for them to eat out of the groceries they had bought after they moved in. They had bread, spaghetti noodles, eggs, milk, and rice. All staples, but nothing Freddie could make an actual meal out of. The only promising item in the kitchen seemed to be the carton of a half dozen eggs. 

Freddie pulled the carton out and laid it on the counter, digging deep into his mind to try to think of how the heck he was supposed to cook them. How had his mother made them all fluffy and mixed up? How had she made the clear part turn white? And how the heck had she made the egg get all rubbery and keep its shape, even when the shell was peeled away? Cooking was a mystery to Freddie. His specialty was visual and aural art, not culinary art.

One thing he did remember was his mother asking if he wanted them boiled for breakfast. That was the hard, rubbery kind. he pulled out a pot, and set the empty thing on the stove. Okay, he could do this. But wait. Now what?

“Damn it,” he cursed under his breath, letting his teeth poke out in an annoyed grimace. He was absolutely useless at this. He knew his only hope would be to ask his flatmate. “Roger,” he called as he turned on his heel and headed for the closed bedroom door on the outskirts on the minuscule living room. “Roger, dear, how do you—“ Freddie’s words died on his lips as he unceremoniously swung the drummers bedroom door open and found him sat on the floor beside his bed, hugging his knees to his chest, face red and eyes pouring rivers of tears as he struggled to catch his breath. Freddie had never seen his new best friend like this, and had never expected to either.  
“Roger…” Freddie whimpered as the drummer his his face behind his hands, furiously swiping at the tears he so desperately tried to keep from coming. 

“Don’t come in,” Roger choked, trying and failing to sound normal around the lump in his throat. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Nonsense, darling.” Ignoring the drummers protests, Freddie immediately went into mother hen mode. He swept into the room and without hesitation pulled the frail blond to his feet and onto the bed, gathering him in his arms and pulling his head down to rest on his shoulder. “Tell me what’s eating you, love.” 

And just like that Roger broke down in front of someone for the first time in as long as he could remember. Freddie just had that air about him. For hours Roger wailed to Freddie about money, about being too proud to ask for help from his parents, about his childhood and family dynamic, his fear of failure, his hatred of medical school despite his passion for learning, and how damn hungry he was, and he didn’t even know how to boil an egg. 

Freddie held him and eventually he too broke down and together they shared their woes. They had a lot of the same fears and struggles, and they resolved that they would work them all out together. They were best friends, business owners, a team, damn it. And they were going to be just fine. 

Everything was going to be alright.

*End flashback*

… he’d grown to know how to ground him and support him until it was over. Freddie was the only person allowed in through the tough, mysterious walls of Roger’s complex mind. He was the only person close enough and complex enough to even begin to understand him, himself. 

But now, Roger was having an anxiety attack, and he wasn’t safe from prying eyes. He wasn’t secure in his bed or wrapped in Freddie’s arms in the frontman’s bed either: Instead, he was in a conference room of a recording studio, crumbling before his other two bandmates who were supposed to respect him and had never been allowed to see this side of him. His anxiety never manifested like this in public and he was mortified. He felt weak, scared, and pathetic. He’d take his usual embarrassing, frustration-fueled temper tantrum over this any day. But this was happening no matter how much he didn’t want it to. 

Freddie pulled Roger half into his lap, holding him flush to his side and cradling his head on his collarbone. Freddie carded one hand through the soft, fluffy blond waves while the other arm wrapped around the drummer’s slim form and gripped tightly on his bicep to hold him in place. Roger’s knuckle was still trapped between his teeth in attempt to hold it all in while his other hand remained pressed under the collar of his shirt, both arms pulled in tight over his chest as if he were trying to protect himself. 

“Shhh. You’re okay, love. You need to breathe. You’re okay.” Freddie hummed as he began a slow, side-to-side rocking motion, himself actively trying to steady his own breathing to lead the way for Roger. 

Brian and John exchanged looks of concern and confusion as the painful scene unfolded before them. Brian bit his lower lip giving John a pointed look before theatrically going back to pouring over the lyrics he had been working on, signaling to the bassist that he wanted to pretend that nothing was happening. Though Brian had never seen this side of Roger, he still knew the drummer very well and he knew that if they made a big deal of this he would be very upset about it. It was always best to downplay this type of thing with him because pointing out his emotions made him less likely to ever share them again.

Roger tasted salt and iron as he bit into his knuckle, having accidentally reopened a scab that had come from the inevitable impact of his hands on the rims of his drums, for when he played he couldn’t pay attention to that type of thing and was instead consumed entirely by the music and the beat he needed to flawlessly produce. He took a deep breath and focused on his hands in attempt to ground himself: they ached and stung from the hours of playing he’d been doing recently in preparation for this album. 

Roger released his hand from his teeth and winced as he surveyed the damage as it shook before him. He flexed and stretched his fingers and focused on the feeling as each joint extended, popped, and clicked as he moved them. Scars and callouses littered his hands along with fresh scabs from the day before, and the drummer admired the raw skin curiously, his mind beginning to come out of its fog as he forced himself to feel something other than the swell of painful anxiety in his chest.

Freddie noticed his best friend’s fixation on his hands and slowly brought his own down from the drummer’s hair to wrap gently around the damaged fingers. He ran his thumb lightly over the uneven texture of the knuckles and frowned as he wiped a bit of blood away from the bite. “Oh, Rog,” he breathed lightly, but swallowed the remark he wanted to make about him hurting himself, accidental or not. He needn’t call attention to it. Freddie then gently took Roger’s other wrist and lightly extracted the drummer’s other hand from his shirt, bringing it down to clasp with the other, where the frontman held them lightly. “Look at all the work you’ve put in, darling,” Freddie cooed, choosing instead to offer validation to his bandmate. “You’re doing so well. We couldn’t do any of this without you.”

Roger felt a wave of relief at the opening to share the feelings he wasn’t even sure how to put into words. All he knew was he needed Freddie to know how he was feeling, because he couldn’t go on alone much longer. “It’s a lot, Fred,” he breathed, his voice shaking as he referred not just to the early mornings, late nights, and long stretches away from his family, but to all that along with the every day strain of being human. “I’m so tired.” 

“I know, love,” Freddie continued to draw patterns over Roger’s hands with his thumb as the hand that was resting on his back travelled up to squeeze his shoulders. “I don’t want to overwhelm you, darling, but you’re so important to us and all of this work you do, all the pain and sacrifice is what has helped us get to this point. You know success doesn’t come easy. There’s a reward for all of this and it’s knowing we did what we came to do.”

The drummer nodded as he let himself relax into Freddie, wilting into his friend’s side as he tried to soak up the warmth Freddie radiated. “This is all I’ve ever wanted. But I’m just so tired.”

Freddie just nodded and slowly wrapped both arms around him, letting him relax and rest in his embrace for a while. Fred felt for the drummer, as all of this was a lot for all of them, but he knew the level of dedication and commitment Roger held for the rockstar life transcended the others’ and that came along with more frustration and strain. He put in so much work and gave so much of himself to the band but he was rarely acknowledged due to the fact that he was just the drummer. People who didn’t know much about music didn’t know that the band wouldn’t be Queen without Roger. People rarely knew that the trademark harmonies that were as if not more recognizable than the shrill of Brian’s guitar were all thanks to Roger’s incredible range. People rarely knew that many of the hits were of Roger’s creation, or that the drummer had played several other instruments other than drums on Queen tracks. Freddie knew Roger’s tremendous contributions to the band were often overlooked, but that regardless the drummer put his entire heart and soul into all the work he did. The poor man was simply drained. If Freddie knew anything, he knew he would sit there on that couch holding Roger for eternity if it meant making him feel better. 

Roger’s breathing returned to normal as he stared at his hands with the same intense focus that was normally reserved only for his drums. His best friend had seen what was working for him and had gone with it, helping to pull him out of the dark fog that hand been consuming him, and his warm embrace was acting like a charger, seeping relief and energy into the young blond. 

A while passed before Roger finals sat up and stretched before he pushed his glasses on and glanced back at the lyric sheet he’d been pouring over before his little episode. Freddie didn’t move to get up but instead settled into a more comfortable position on the couch, not wanting to be far from his friend. 

Brian had been waiting for everything to cool down, and noticed immediately when Roger’s demeanor changed almost completely back to normal. Relief flooded the guitarist as he watched his friend return to his regular mannerisms, though concern still lurked behind the initial reaction. “Alright there, Rog?” Brian asked, peering over the rims of his own readers.

“Alright.” Roger confirmed, and just like that, the band returned to work as though nothing had happened. Despite not knowing what had caused the drummer to get so upset, they knew him well enough to know that if he said it would be, everything really would be alright.


End file.
